Nursing

Permanent URI for this collection

https://erepository.mku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/161

Browse

Browsing Nursing by Author "Mumbi, Mary"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Adherence to Medication administration guidelines among Nurses in a Mission Hospital in Meru, Kenya
    (International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 2019-09) Mumbi, Mary; Mwenda, Catherine; Njoroge, George; Njau, Stanley
    Errors in medication administration are the most prevailing in medicine and can cause harm to the patient, morbidity and mortality as a result of negligence and failure to adhere to guidelines. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among 117 nurses working at a mission hospital in Meru. A sample of 106 nurses was chosen using stratified and simple random sampling methods. Data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire and an observational checklist formulated from the Nursing Council of Kenya (NCK) manual of clinical procedures were used to collect data. Analysis was done using SPSS Version 21 software. 73.5% of the respondents adhered to hygiene measures, 65.5% adhered to medication safety guidelines while 65.9% adhered to medication record guidelines. Overall the adherence was poor with 37.6% (32) respondents had high adherence level while 62.4% (53) respondents had low adherence level. On observation the adherence level was 59.3%. An association was found between the mean of the two adherence levels (p=<0.001). Index terms-Medication errors, Medication administration guidelines, Adherence, patient safety, Nursing Council of Kenya I. I NTRODUCTION edication administration is a procedure that should be carried out with utmost care, since a small error can cause great harm or even death to the patient. The procedure is almost entirely the role of the nurse. Various bodies have stipulated guidelines for nurses to follow when administering medications. Hospitals have also designed and implemented policies, procedures and medication administration guidelines for practitioners in the clinical area, and come up with systems of risk management to help reduce medication errors [1]. Polypharmacy among patients, complex disease processes, multiple prescribers and a number of medical problems are among the factors that highly contributes to medication errors as nurses may fail to adhere to the guidelines as they deal with distinct matters. Irreversible consequences that are irreversible which may occur, as well as large sums of treatment costs every year as a result of malpractices in medication administration makes the matter to be of great importance [1]. According to [2], medication errors have been found to occur in 2 to 14% of the admitted patients with 1 to 2 per cent of them getting harm. It has been found that about 23,000 physical disabilities and 10,500 deaths occur every year in Iran due to medical errors that are approximated to be 55,000 [3]. In Ethiopia, medication administration error has been found to be approximately 51.8%. In Kenya, the prevalence has been found to be 20% despite that most errors are never documented, as reported in a study carried out in two referral hospitals [4]. The manual of clinical procedures by the Nursing Council of Kenya has stipulated various guidelines on medication administration. The manual is revised after every ten years as the profession advances and the last review was in 2009 [5]. Despite the guidelines being in place errors in medication administration have continued to occur with 20% prevalence